I wrote up some thoughts on Jose Zagal's "Encouraging Ethical Reflection with Videogames" and Oldenburgs "Simulating Religious Faith," so I figured I would put them up here for later reference and for anyone interested in those topics. They are kind of random, so bear with me.
In “Encouraging Ethical Reflection with Videogames,” Zagal explores the ways in which video games can aid players in identifying moral and ethical issues and in better understanding their context, both within games and without. Moral dilemmas, he notes, form the foundation of ethical exploration, so it only makes sense that a medium involving player/audience agency would have greater efficacy in exploring ethics in a meaningful way. One of the most interesting ideas that I encountered in Zagal’s article was the notion that games in some cases validate both “good” and “evil” by allowing players to assume the roles of protagonists and/or antagonists. Part of rational thought is being able to hold two contradictory notions within the mind simultaneously, and I think that games provide for a more holistic experience in providing the player with multiple viewpoints and ways of thinking about the consequences of his actions. They allow the player to contemplate the ethical issues from different perspectives and thus grant the player greater objectivity in deciding how he/she will direct his/her life and the actions of his/her in-game avatar. I thought Zagal’s comment that the character becomes the ethical stand-in for the player was really compelling, because in some sense, the culmination of the avatar’s actions and desires represent the innermost desires and goals of the player even more candidly than do his/her own physical actions. Games create a space wherein players can experiment with truth in an environment of safety, and while there may not be physical manifestations of the actions that players perform within the game, their implications are no less important in terms of formation of mental paradigms. The experiences players encounter within games are, in some sense, no less real than those which he/she encounters in “real” life.
Another concept that was really interesting for me was the idea that we can actually punctuate ethical messages through gameplay. Zagal notes that in some games, “extended action consisting of multiple button presses is chained together in such a way as to physically strain the player who must maintain an awkward and uncomfortable hand position that in some way reflects the discomfort the character is experiencing on the screen.” This seems like a brilliant way to encourage contemplation on moral dilemmas or emotional states of being, and it is quite possibly the most sure-fire way of accomplishing such a complex feat. It becomes near impossible for the player to disassociate his own physical experience from that which his avatar is experiencing, and that drives home more deeply the implications of those actions, both on oneself and on other players. In such a way, video games have the potential to be deeply humanizing, building empathy not so much for individuals but more broadly for the human experience as an integral unit—for suffering, for doubt, for loss and longing.
In “Encouraging Ethical Reflection with Videogames,” Zagal explores the ways in which video games can aid players in identifying moral and ethical issues and in better understanding their context, both within games and without. Moral dilemmas, he notes, form the foundation of ethical exploration, so it only makes sense that a medium involving player/audience agency would have greater efficacy in exploring ethics in a meaningful way. One of the most interesting ideas that I encountered in Zagal’s article was the notion that games in some cases validate both “good” and “evil” by allowing players to assume the roles of protagonists and/or antagonists. Part of rational thought is being able to hold two contradictory notions within the mind simultaneously, and I think that games provide for a more holistic experience in providing the player with multiple viewpoints and ways of thinking about the consequences of his actions. They allow the player to contemplate the ethical issues from different perspectives and thus grant the player greater objectivity in deciding how he/she will direct his/her life and the actions of his/her in-game avatar. I thought Zagal’s comment that the character becomes the ethical stand-in for the player was really compelling, because in some sense, the culmination of the avatar’s actions and desires represent the innermost desires and goals of the player even more candidly than do his/her own physical actions. Games create a space wherein players can experiment with truth in an environment of safety, and while there may not be physical manifestations of the actions that players perform within the game, their implications are no less important in terms of formation of mental paradigms. The experiences players encounter within games are, in some sense, no less real than those which he/she encounters in “real” life.
Another concept that was really interesting for me was the idea that we can actually punctuate ethical messages through gameplay. Zagal notes that in some games, “extended action consisting of multiple button presses is chained together in such a way as to physically strain the player who must maintain an awkward and uncomfortable hand position that in some way reflects the discomfort the character is experiencing on the screen.” This seems like a brilliant way to encourage contemplation on moral dilemmas or emotional states of being, and it is quite possibly the most sure-fire way of accomplishing such a complex feat. It becomes near impossible for the player to disassociate his own physical experience from that which his avatar is experiencing, and that drives home more deeply the implications of those actions, both on oneself and on other players. In such a way, video games have the potential to be deeply humanizing, building empathy not so much for individuals but more broadly for the human experience as an integral unit—for suffering, for doubt, for loss and longing.
